Promising Practices
The Promising Practices database informs professionals and community members about documented approaches to improving community health and quality of life.
The ultimate goal is to support the systematic adoption, implementation, and evaluation of successful programs, practices, and policy changes. The database provides carefully reviewed, documented, and ranked practices that range from good ideas to evidence-based practices.
Learn more about the ranking methodology.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12
The Chatham-Savannah Youth Futures Authority (YFA) mission is to create a community collaborative to bring about change in the policies, procedures and funding patterns of community institutions needed to enable the youth of the community to become productive, economically self-sustaining adults.
Filed under Good Idea, Education / Educational Attainment, Children, Teens
The goal of Check & Connect is to encourage middle and high school students to stay on track towards graduation. Check & Connect seeks to foster student engagement at school and with learning. In Check & Connect, engagement is defined as commitment to and investment in learning, as well as identification with and belonging at school. Engagement is associated with desired academic, behavioral, cognitive, and affective outcomes, such as persisting in school and graduating.
Students who participate in Check & Connect are significantly more likely to stay in high school than similar peers who did not receive the intervention (24%). Students who participate in Check & Connect are significantly more likely to complete high school than peers who did not receive the intervention (20%).
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Employment, Families, Urban
The mission of Chicago Commons is to help individuals, families and communities to overcome poverty, discrimination and isolation.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Teens, Adults
The goal of this project is to achieve high rates of identification of new HIV infection and to decrease the spread of HIV among youth in metropolitan DC, which is severely affected by the epidemic.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
The goal of the Children’s Power Play! Campaign is to improve youth physical activity and nutrition.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Civic Engagement, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
WomanSpirit aims to foster grassroots women's leadership in the St. Louis area by claiming safe community space for women's mutual support and training, gaining access to government funds for women's economic development, and achieving positions in local, regional and national decision-making bodies.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens
The goal of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adolescent Depression is to treat depressive symptoms in adolescents.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adolescent Depression showed more rapid treatment response than both systematic behavior family therapy and non-directive support therapy. CBT also showed a greater rate of decline in self-reported depression over time.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases
The goal of HealthSentry is to meet the challenge of linking public health organizations to reliable clinical data without burdensome manual data collection and reporting.more timely and accurate reporting.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
The mission of Communities Putting Prevention to Work: Cherokee Nation is to promote healthy eating, physical activity and increase tobacco cessation throughout the tribe’s jurisdictional boundaries.
Communities Putting Prevention to Work: Cherokee Nation works to prevent obesity and tobacco use through various programs including chronic disease screenings, farm-to-school programs, and smoking cessation classes available to all Cherokees in the service area.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Families
The CSB program’s immediate goals are to increase positive perceptions toward breastfeeding, increase the availability of breastfeeding resources, and reduce barriers experienced in the community by women of child-bearing age. The long-term goal of the project is to increase exclusive breastfeeding rates through a sustainable model of cross-sector support for breastfeeding.
The project also effectively addresses the racial and socioeconomic disparities in breastfeeding rates. The Kansas Breastfeeding Coalition’s collective impact approach supports efforts of those serving African-American and lower income women. As a result of this project, these organizations receive the support they need to increase their impact when they become aligned with other, larger organizations working toward similar goals, creating a synergy across groups working on breastfeeding support.
Based on results from our evaluation, along with improved exclusive breastfeeding rates in the majority of the communities that could be associated with the CSB criteria, we believe the CSB program is impactful.